[Java-gnome-developer] Re: Adding support for other GTK Objects

[Jean v. W. <je...@sm...>]

Hi David,

I do not want to throw a spanner in your works but we are planning to
release a new version of Java-GNOME some time next week (Do NOT quote me on
that) so it may mean that some of your hard work may have to be redone on
the new version.  Do not be afraid it will be mostly testing.  See my
comments below:

On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, dkennedy wrote:

> 
> Hello,
> 
> I stumbled across java-gnome recently and I have to say that I am impressed.
> It works very well and has a nice clean interface.

Thank you for the compliment.  A lot of very good work has been done by
Jeff and Dan.

> I would like to add Java support for a Gtk object that is not part of the
> standard Gtk set.  Because the Gtk object is in a separate .so file and has a
> different header I had to do the following:
> 	- add the appropriate description into gtk.defs
> 	- add a line to /usr/include/gtk/gtk.h
> 	- relink the libGTKJava.so adding in a dependancy for the separate .so
> 
> The above worked great and it does exactly what I want.  Unfortunately, it is
> obviously a big hack.
> 
> I would like to know how I should go about adding a java interface to this Gtk
> object.  I have a few thoughts:
> 	- I would like to distribute the .defs file with the Gtk object itself
> 	- I noticed that there is an include operative in the .defs file so
> 	perhaps including the gtk.defs would be the way to go.
> 	- Hopefully there could be a way of specifying a .so in some meta
> 	way to be associated with the .defs
> 
> Can you please suggest how I should go about doing this?

David, please do not throw away your patch (that is the defs file).  What I
would rather suggest is that we should add another "library" or jar file.
The other alternative is to:

- Make a new .defs file called something like gtkmoz.defs
- Include this into the gnu.gtk tree or create a new branch called
  something like gnu.gtkmoz. (We moved the packages from gtk, gdk, gnome
  etc. to gnu.gtk, gnu.gdk, gnu.gnome to be closer to the Java spec.)
- Add a flag to the configure script that will specifically enable this
  feature (the item above) and that will add the required linking flags and
  header files.
- If we decide to add this permanently to the project we can then remove
  the flag or make the flag a default.

In the long run we MAY make Java-GNOME a bit more modular.  That is have
the default stuff in one RPM and have additional stuff in "add-ons" that
will go and put these RPMS in the java-gnome directory.  This will mean
that we will be able to distribute it better, only adding those parts which
the user wants.

Unfortunately we may have to do this post 0.6 (We made a LOT of changes and
have added libglade support (thanks Avi Bryant) and libglade-gnome support)

Jeff Morgan is co-ordinating this release and will be able to give you more
information.

> Thank you.
> 
> BTW: The Gtk object I am wrapping is GtkEmbedMoz the gtk embedded mozilla
> object.  And please don't mention the Blackwood project.
> 
> -- 
> David Kennedy, Technical Account Manager, Linuxcare, Inc.
> 613.562.9594 tel, 613.562.9304 fax
> dke...@li..., http://www.linuxcare.com/
> Linuxcare.  Putting open source to work.

Regards
Jean